About Us
SnapDragonz has been slowly evolving since 1999 when Krystal acquired her first iguana from her mother when she first moved to Edmonton, AB. While her mother believed it to be a harmless obsession, she soon learned that she had created a monster. Shortly after the arrival of an iguana named Ezra, a few additions were made to the home -- a dog, a veiled chameleon, a leopard gecko -- and it just continued to grow. Over ten years later, Krystal has been successfully breeding and raising leopard geckos on a small scale, and is now expanding this breeding hobby to include Kenyan Sand boas, corn snakes and African Fat Tail geckos. As space allows, these projects willonly grow, but for now the small project will be limited. Her husband, Dave, has been a huge support in her success and trials, and continues to support her and offer help where he can. Krystal has had working AHT experience for two years. While her educational plan was to follow this course, some life changes were made. instead, she has decided to retain this knowledge and continue to learn while continuing on a different career path, but enjoying her hobby even more. While the certificate of education is nice to show off, the hands on experience is the most important aspect of learning.
While mistakes are made in any hobby, the pet hobby is almost taken for granted by inexperience and irresponsibility. When someone or something is in need, Krystal has a hard time saying "no". Because of this, several of the animals under her care have been rescued from different situations. Squirt is an 11-year old green iguana that lived in a 30-40 gallon terrarium for most of those years. He was provided with no water, no fresh veggies and only pellet food, had very low humidity and no UVB bulb. On x-ray, his bones were barely visible due to a low calcium concentration. He has a clubbed foot, disfigured toes, a poorly re-grown tail and the left side of his ribcage is dented. He is also missing half of his teeth and came to Krys and Dave with a mouth rot infection. While Squirt will not likely reach his mature adult size, he has grown a very small amount in the nearly two years under their care, and is showing daily signs of attitude improvement. He eats like a full grown iguana and, despite his previous ailments, seems to be content. Lan is a flame point Tonkinese cat who seems to worm his way into every visitor's heart, and over all their clothes. His playful bites are not meant to harm, but he sometimes gets carried away. He was dropped off at a petstore at about 4 weeks of age, and bottle fed until he was old enough to eat on his own. He is incredibly vocal Oogey and Boogey are a pair of Mali uromastyx. They came here at about ten years old, and were given to Krystal as two males. It turns out that Oogey is, in fact, a female. They had never had a proper heat gradient and lived together in a 10 gallon terrarium. They were fed lettuce and beet greens now and again, and have suffered through several bad sheds. Boogey lost the tip of his tail shortly after coming here, but seems to be just fine, otherwise. Their 40 gallon terrarium has been difficult to maintain in regards to temperatures, but after a lot of adjustments, seems to have finally balanced. While Krystal and David have been more than happy to take in these, as well as others, on a rescue and rehabilitation basis, they are by no means a"rescue". These animals have a forever home with them, with no possibility of breeding so they canmaintain a risk-free, healthy atmosphere and life while under their care. Many people do not consider the risks of "rescuing" an animal in order to breed it, and Krystal and Dave hope they can help educate people so these scenarios can be prevented.
A Few of the Rescues
and will tell you stories, whether you want to hear them or not.
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